Workers Vanguard Nazis routed In Evanston, Illinois. Anti-Nazi protesters Join In SL/U.S. chant: "Sweep the Nazis off the streetsl"

I

Smash Klan/Nazi Terrorl

Bologna, 2 August: A bomb explodes in the crowded second-class waiting room of the central railway station. Munich, 26 September: The annual Oktoberfest is rocked by a bomb blast. Paris, 3 October: A bomb on a parked car is detonated only moments before hundreds of Jewish worshippers are to leave a synagogue across the street. Fascist terror explodes in Europe. One hundred and one are dead and almost two hundred injured.

In the U. S •. Ku Klux Klan crosses blaze from

Scotland, Cohnecticut and Uniontown, Pennsylvania to Rialto, California. Last November five anti-Klan demonstrators were slain by Klan and Nazi gunmen in Greensboro, North Carolina. In April, fascist nightriders celebrating Hitler's birthday shot and wounded four black women in Chattanooga, Tennes­see. Shortly after California KKK lea!ier Tom Metz­ger won the Democratic Party nomination for Con­gress, Klansmen peat four black members of a

(Continued on page 4)

2 Spartaclst canada

Anti-Gay Frenzy in Mun-icipal Elections

"John SeweJ.I would spend your money to help patch the streets of a communist controlled country [Grenada] while the streets of Toronto are haunted by deviates, rapists and murderers who prey on innocent women and children a~d hunt down the old and the defenseless •••• "REMEMBER THE-DEADLY GAME OF GAY POWER POLITICS HAS STARTED "THE PLA YERS:THOSE NAMED ABOVE ••••• THE- PRIZE: YOUR CHILDREN. "

--from an election leaflet by Positive Parents -

The usual, deadly boredom of this/fall's Toronto municipal elections was broken by a reactionary anti-gay furor directed at gay aldermanic candidate George Hislop and his alliance wi th incumbent m~orJohn Sewell. Sewell. whose stock-in-trade is trendy middle-class "reform" politics. had himself vowed to "clean up" Yonge St., "sin strip. ,,­on more than one occasion but his electoral pact with a homosexual businessman was enough to draw the hysterical wrath of every yahoo in the city.

Leading the attack were the right-wing Toronto Sun, with its stable of yellow journalists, along with the people who brought Anita Bryant to Canada --Renaissance International--a dubious anti-homo­sexual political outfit masquerading as a fundamen­talist religious organization. One mayoralty candi­date got over 2,500 votes on a virulently anti-gay platform, and Arthur Eggleton, who defeated Sewell in the November 10 voting, charged that in San Francisco "the gay community pushed its way into city hall ••• it shouldn't happen here" (Toronto Star, September 3). --rr-Metro's Moderate Majority, " Renaissance International's electoral front, distributed a six­teen-page journal misnamed "Liberation rl door-to­door calling on Toronto voters to stop "Toronto the Good" from becoming "San Francisco North. " In addition to ugly slanders. such as gays are "child molesters, " the pulp sheet attacks abortion, govern­ment lotteries, pornography, "economic permissive ness" and asks voters to oppose "the attacks on faith, freedom, and the family from such a surly, self-seeking barloJarous minority as radical homo­sexuals. " Tracts from the "League Against Homo-

SPARTACIST CANADA Published by the SPARTACIST CANADA PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, Box 6867, Station A, Toronto, Ontario.

Editor: J. Klancy Circulation Manager: C. Ames Production Manager: S. Peters Bus"iness Manager: A. Steen

Signed articles do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Printed in a union shop by union labor.

\

sexuals'~ were found on the desk of at least one downtown police station and the -cops' association let it slip that they were considering active opposi­tion to Sewell and Hislop. The proposal (whiCh was later shelved) by the school board to establish a' liaison committee with some gay community organ­izations parti.cularly enraged the reactionary rabble and was the target of a "Save Our Children" rally in front of city hall in October. .

"Toronto the Good" is a code word for smug. puritanical, Orange Ontario, where you can hardly find a drink on a Sunday and some tinpot cen~or forces you to leave the province to see internation­ally acclaimed films like "The Tin Drum. " N'ow. encouraged by the growing Cold War climate and the legal persecution of gay magazines and clubs. reactionaries have made gays the first target of a general assault on democratic rights. Renaissance International's Ken Campbell says "Of course, the Ku Klux Klan offends Toronto's mod;;ate majoritY" (Liberation. October; italics in original) but the fasc~sts feed on the same _blend of backward social prejudices and anti-communism.

As communists we fully defend democratic rights for homosexuals. Criminally, most of the Stalinist organizations parrot the reactionary p<;>sition that homosexuals are "perverts. " A leaflet distributed at a recent forum of the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) by the Lesbian/Gay Rights Monitor­ing Group-Toronto, which includes ex-members of the RWL, correctly scored these fake-Trotskyists for dropping the issue of gay rights. Unpopular oppressed groups don 't merit much attention for those attempting to curry favor. with the bigoted trade-union bureaucracy. But the gay activists who champion the "autonomous" organization of gays fail to understand that the fate of homosexuals. like that of any other oppressed group, is determined by the course of the class struggle. The defense of the democratic rights of all the oppressed depends on the mobilization of the social power of the work­ing class by a revolutionary party with a program for a workers government ••

LE BOLCHEVIK ~ LIGUE TROTSKYSTE DE FRANCE-­SECTION DE LA TENDANCE SPARTACISTE INTERNATIONALE 50~

(!crire a: Spartacist Cancida Publishing Association, Box 6867 Stn. A, Toronto, Onto

November/December 1980 3

Abolish the War Miasures Act I

Trudeau's troops occupy Montreal during the "October Crisis."

"So I told one guy, I think it was (Pierre) Vall­ieres or (Charles) Gagnon: 'We're arresting you for nothing. You went and sat down in front of the United Nations building in 1965 and you went on a hunger strike demanding to be recognized as a political prisoner. Well, my friend, you have become one. "'Now I'm arresting you, and I have no charges against you. Go to jail--I don't know for how long- -and wait! ,II --Gilles Masse, Montreal Police Brotherhood

president describing the October 1970 arrests, quoted in the Globe and Mail, 4 October

The 1970 Oct~ber Crisis. Trudeau invokes the draconian War Measures Act following the kidnap­ping of British diplomat James Cross anq Quebec labor minister Pierre Laporte by the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ). Armored cars roll into Montreal and fully armed troopers in battle dress guard public buildings.

Over 450 "suspects "--labor leaders, separatists, leftists--are rounded up and held incommunicado for days, without charges, as all civil liberties are suspended. The capitalist media exploit the wild rumors of Cuban involvement, lengthy FLQ hit lists, the ravings of cabinet ministers to create a climate of fear to justify the government's dic­tatorial measures. Trudeau speaks darkly of "ap­prehended insurrection. " The conservative Catholic editor of Le Devoir Claude Ryan is implicated in a mythical provisional government. Jean Marchand spins a lurid yarn o{ "3,000 terrorists armed with

rifles and enough dynamite to blow up the heart of Montreal. "

The welter of reminiscences. official inquiries. journalistic reviews and new trials marking the tenth anniversary of the "October Crisi~' all point to the total fabrication of evidence used by the Liberal governments in Ottawa and Quebec to justify the repression. The Keable commission "investigating" RCMP crimes. the Duchaine report and the unmasking of several police agents within the FLQ point to the strong probability that the authorities had foreknowledge of the kidnap pings but chose to exploit the situation to deal a knockout blow to the entire na­tionalist movement. Almost all of the kidnappers had been followed. photo­graphed and investigated for years; the cops knew wit\1in days. if not hours. the handful of FLQers they were look­ing for. But Trudeau and then-Quebec premier Robert Bourassa saw an op-

portunity to harass. intimidate and disrupt the activities of their political foes. The massive display of force was aimed not only at separatists but at the left and the militant Quebec labor move­ment. Not one of the known members of the FLQ was picked up in the wave of mass arrests.

The War Measures Act gives the bourgeois state the legal means to dispense with all supposed guarantees of democratic rights whenever it feels that capitalist rule is being challenged. This dic­tatorial anti-working class piece of legislation must be abolished. For,the Communist Party of Canada. however. the problem waS "that the War Measures Act contributed nothing to counteracting the juvenile terrorist activities of the FLQ" (Ca­nadian Trib~e. 20 October). From the mouths of StalinistS' t~is is not such a surprising statem ent.

(Continued on page 12)

SubsCribel $211 0 i.ssues Name ______________________ !.~I ___

Address ______________________ _ City __________ ---'---' ______ _

Province _______ Phone No. ______ ~-45

Make check out/mail to: Spartacist Canada Publishing Association, Box 6867, Station A, Toronto

4

Klan ... (continued ,from page 1)

Communist Party ~ti-racist group in Los Angeles. Metzger, referring to his July meeting with

notorious German Nazi Manfred Roeder, commented, "There is only one movement. Our goals are simi­lar. " Roeder'--who previous to his stay in the U. S. was harbored in Teheran by Ayatollah Khomeini--is wanted in Europe for bombing Jewish synagogues and camps housing foreign workers. Roeder's ex­perience with explosives was passed on to the· Klan. On September 20, the Los Angeles offices of the

Mike Tenszen

November a-Klan terror ride. In London, Ontario.

Communist Party are bombed. Then on September 23, 20 Socialist Workers Party members narrowly escape death when a Klansman is discovered plant­ing a bomb outside their office.

On November 8, the Ku Klux Klan burned a nine meter cross at the farm of Martin Weiche, former Nazi Luftwaffe pilot and president of the Canadian

Spartaclst Canada

Nazi party, near London, Ontario and threatened to hold a cross burning in Toronto. Some of these Canadian scum reportedly traveled to Benson, North Carolina to attend a rally in defense of the Greens1;loro killers. Ominously, shortly after the much publicized opening of the KKK's public office in Toronto, the Communist Party headquarters were burnt to the ground following a late-night e,x­plosion. On Labor Day the national office of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers was set on fire, destroying most of the union's files and records-­again the suspected work of right-wing arsonists. In late October the body of a 6-year-old East Indian boy was found in the underground parking garage of a suburban Toronto high-rise. East Indian activists report that suspected Klan members moved out of a neighboring building the .day after the boy's death (Contrast, 31 October).

The KKK and the NaZIS are on the rise. In the political climate of imperialist warmongering against the USSR the racist and anti-communist terror of the fasCists is the domestic cutting edge of reactionary Cold War. During the U. S. elections Klansmen campaigned for office on both the Repub­lican and Democratic tickets. In Toronto, former Western Guard member Armand Siksna ran for mayor on the Klan's race-hating platform. The KKK's appearance on the electoral arena is not so much a bid for "respectability" as it is indicative of the growing perception that the Klan is only an extreme version of contemporary mainstream bourgeois politics.

In this context it is not surprising to find that another one-time Western Guard member has re­surfaced under the cover. of the Canadian Anti­Soviet Action Committee (CASAC). Reportedly when asked why Soviet Jewry was conspicuously absent from the sometimes obscure list of religious, eth­nic and national groups championed by the CASAC, a University of Toronto representative retorted darkly, "Bolshevism is Jewish. " Evidently im­pressed by these "credentials, " the Toronto Sun printed a glowing account of the activities of' -­CASAC member Nikola Sahounov (2 November). It seems that this Bulgarian~born anti-Communist (dubbed "freedom fighter" by the Sun) has packed his bags for Afghanistan "to take the Red Army on face-to-face. " The article reports without comment how "Sahounov found it 'unbelievable' to see how Canada allowed the communist party to exist here. " This piece is only one example of the extensive free publicity the capitalist media has given the fascists since they stepped up their recruiting drive in Can­ada some months ago.

No Platform for Fasclstsl Labor Must Smash the Klanl

The B. C. Federation of Labour responded to the alarming growth of Klan and Nazi activity in Canada by devoting the September issue of Labour News to the "Resurgence of the Right Wing. Ii Noting the danger to organized labor represented by the Klan,

November/December 1980 5

Jail the ~llers of Albert Johnson! TORONTO, November 14--The two Toronto cops charged with manslaughter in the cold-blooded, racist killing of 35-year-old Jamaican immi­grant Albert Johnson ~ away scot-free. The trial judge eagerly expressed his wholehearted approval of the verdict in which Constables William Inglis and Walter Cargnelli were acquit­ted. Judge Dunlap told the jury that even if the cops had assaulted Johnson they were still per­fectly justified in killing him: "It's hard to have detached reflection in the face of an uplifted knife" (Globe and Mail, November 14).

Johnson was gunned down by the two police thugs in August 1979 after the cops bur.st illto his house and beat him with billy clubs. The cops claimed that Johnson had "threatened their lives" with a lawn edger and that they, of course, killed him in "self-defense. " But even Inglis and Car­gnelli's fellow cops from the Ontario Provincial Police who conducted an "investigation" into the killing failed to find any fingerprints on the lawn edger. .

No one can say that the O~P didn't do their best to cover the tracks of their trigger-happy cop "brothers!" Johnson's nine-year-old daugh-

Labour News incredibly adds that these killers have "every much a right to exist and function inour community as labour does. " As a "short-term so­lution" to fascist terror the B. C. Fed proposes to "educate people. " But the only "education" these scum understand is the same as that reserved for scabs--and it isn't conveyed in the language of polite debate.

The rival Stalinists of the pro- Moscow CP and the pro-Peking Workers Communist Party (WCP) agree with each other to disagree with the B. C. Fed. Not, mind you, because they seek to mobilize the powerful labor movement to smash the fascists. Rather they believe that fighting the Klan is the duty of the provincial governments. Under thEO aus­pices of the CP-backed "Committee for Racial Equality, " the WCP along with In Struggle! and the tiny International Socialists joined together on October 4 to demonstrate in favor of legal action against the Klan. A Trotskyist League leaflet dis­tributed at the march stated:

" 'Ban the Klan'? What dangerous stupidity! It doesn't take much to figure 'Out that state bans· against the fascist right will always be applied 'evenly' (read: most stringently) against the left •••• Even the Metro Labour Council refused to endorse this demonstration on the grounds that such government bans inevitably rebound against the labor movement."

ter's testimony that her father had been' forced to kneel down by the cops and then shot was dis­missed. despite evidence that Johnson had to have been shot from above according to the entry and angle of the bullet. The OPP claimed that she was drunk and had been coached into mak.tng the state­ment. although Johnson's daughter had told the same story to reporters immediately after the shooting! The OPP also managed to elicit a com­pletely different statement from Cargnelli than his original confession in which he stated that Johnson had slid down the stairs with the lawn edger in hand. His second statement, which conveniently matched that of Inglis, had Johnson leaping down the stairs and lunging at the cops with the lawn edger.

The trial was a cover-up from beginning to end. As black community leader Dudley Laws commented. "Albert Johnson only was on trial. The police were never on trial. It is a disgrace." The killing of Albert Johnson must be avenged! We demand that Inglis and Cargnelli be jailed and all the cops disarmed! So long as they have an open license to kill on behalf of the capitalist. state, the killer cops will continue to claim new victims.

The CP's timing was unfortunate, to put it deli­cately. Since the beginning of the year the Metro Labour Council had actively opposed a proposed city bylaw which was little more than a municipal version of the War Measures Act. Naturally. the 'police were strongly behind the bylaw which was a 'blank cheque for cop terror. The law allowed for searches without warrants, suppression of strikes and a general suppression of all civil liberties in " "t t"" t '1 emergency Sl ua IOns --a ca egory generous y defined by the cops to, include "social unrest, sub­versive activity. organized illegal activism •••• " Understandably the Metro Labour Council was hardly in the mood to support a demonstration call­ing on the provincial government to adopt .similar legislation.

Similarly the Body Politic collective, which it­self was the victim of the cops' judicious "law and order" in the blatant jackboot raid on its offices in December 1977, refused to take part in the demon­stration. But then the CP didn't want" a 'gay speaker at its rally in the first place. As the TL leaflet pointed out:

"Capitulation to ugly right-wing bigotry--the lifeblood of the Klan/Nazi ~ilth--is apparently the going price for bourgeois respectability. But the Labour ,Council of Metropo}Jtan Toronto --now that's a different matter! Only days be­fore the demonstration, placards bearing the

(Continued on page 13)

'6

Former NDP Mayoralty Candidate Brian Campbell :

From the NDPto Trotskyism VANCOUVER--The TL is back! Nearly 50 people attended jormer NDP mayoral candidate Brian Campbell's two forums here on October 17. Old friends and new purchased 39 points worth of sub­scriptions as lively discussion punctuated brisk sales at the TVs literature table. After the evening forum most of the participants. including students. union activists and former members of the NDP Vancouver Area Council. continued the discussions at an informal social.

In his presentation. entitled "From the NDP to Trotskyism. " Campbell traced his political develop­ment from the United Church through eight years of NDP activism to today (see "Why We Joined the TL. " SC No. 44. September/October). Campbell's deci­sion to join the TL caused something of a commotion among his former political friends and supporters. One friend from 15 years ago told him recently that "we had a reunion the othe r day and we were talking

Spartaclst Canada

SC Photo

about you and. well. we were proposing a rescue operation to try and sort of bring you back. "

To the people who asked whether he was becoming "irrelevant" and wondered "why would someone go from a large organization like the NDP to a small one like the TL. " Campbell stressed the necessity to fight for a revolutionary program. Twenty years of social and political experience have led him to join the TL. he said. After finally rejecting the reformists' program of "putting patches on the ass of capitalism. " he chose instead the "Trotskyist League and the international Spartacist tendency whose prime focus. whose whole reason for being. is to make a revolution. is to overthrow capitalism. " In contrast. from strikebreaking to joining in the imperialist chorus against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. the right-wing social democrats of the NDP stand on the side of the bosses and their govern­ment against the working class ••

Sub Drive: 165% Success The Trotskyist League's 1980 subscription

drive for Spartacist Canada/Workers Vanguard­ended November 2 with comrades and supporters selling a total of 347 points--165 percent of our 210 point quota! The Spartacist Canada sub list reached an 2t1l-tinte high with the addition of 77 subs from the four-week drive. The sub drive success demonstrated the TV s drive to go forward and was a confirmation of the decision of our recent national conference to send a team of comrades to Vancouver--where 39 points were sold at our "From the NDP to Trotskyism" forum alone!

This year's sub drive was a week shorter than in 1979. But despite the work involved in re-establishing our Vancouver branch in

October. the TL had surpassed its national quota by the end of the third week. At the end of the final week more subscriptions had been sold to both WV and SC than in last year's sub drive and overall subS"ales were up 27 percent.

The prize for highest sales goes to Brian in Vancouver with 31 points; runner-up was Audrey in Toronto with 27.

Final Points: Toronto Vancouver Winnipeg Total

198 137 12

347

November/December 1980 7

"Enough! It's Time for a Workers Party':

Spartacist Party Gets 7,100 Votes in San Francisco November 5--Reagan won. Carter lost. Anderson got his Federal matching funds and 80 million Amer­icans refused to cast a ballot. Across the U. S. working people knew there was no choice for them. The racist. anti-Soviet. religious nuts running for president all meant more military build-up, more inflation, more layoffs, more KKK/Nazi killers on the loose. IIReagan, Carter? Oh Shit! II headlined the Spartacist League's Workers Vanguard (25 July), capturing the gut response of millions.

While a mixture of resignation, disgust and de­spair pervaded on November 4. in at least one city, San Francisco, American workers did have a real choice. Spartacist Party candidate Diana Coleman, a 34-year-old socialist union militant, won 7,183 votes for the Board of Supervisors. running against the -parties of capitalist austerity and war, on the slogan: IIEnough! It's time for a Workers Party! II

To many people in Canada a IIworkers partyll means something like the NDP so it was fitting that on October 25, former NDP Vancouver mayoral candidate, Brian Campbell, addressed over 100 at­tending a SF Spartacist League forum in support of Coleman'S campaign. Campbell noted that groups like the Revolutionary Workers League's (RWL) American sister organization, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), talked a lot about the need for a labor party:

"In Canada, we have the kind of labor party they are talking about •.. a reformist party, a bour­geois workers party. The NDP and social-dem­ocratic parties like it are a roadblbck that will become more virulent, more vigorous the clos­er the possibility of attaining workers power becomes. 11

The SWP, who ran Andrew Pulley--a scab--for president and bragged about how their Congressional candidate Mark Friedman debated the terrorist KKK, and the Communist Party both ran campaigns that closely parallel NDP-style reformism. Their slo­gans were almost indistinguish~ble: IIHuman Needs Before Profits II and IIPeople Before Profits, II re­spectively. As the Spartacist Party's election bro­chure pointed out:

"They think you can change the priorities of capitalism at the voting booth •••• But capital­ism puts nothing before profits. The capitalist state can't be reformed to serve the interests of workers and poor people. It must be re-

Vanguard Photo

Spartaclst Party candidate Diana Coleman campaigns.

placed by a workers state and it will take a socialist revolution to)get one. "

Instead of attempting to pressure the capitalists the Spartacist Campaign Committee sought "to use the campaign the way Diana Coleman would use the office--as a platform to rally workers to the battle lines of the class struggle" (WV, No. 264, 19 Sept.'>. That's exactly what Coleman did when she played a central role as an organizer for the SL-initiated united front rally that stopped the Nazis in San Fran­cisco April 19, when I, 200 trade unionists, gays. blacks. Jews, Asian-Americans, Latinos and socialists occupied the intended site of the Nazi demonstration.

Unlike the SWP/CP reformists, Coleman's cam­paign focused on the real issues facing workers as she took her progrfm to union meetings, plant gates

(continued on page 15)

8 Spartacl.t Canada

The Left on Poland:

Lawyers for Catholic Reaction

Solidarity leader church.

kneels before Catholic

"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues."

--John, 2:3-4

" "Poland: A Workers Victory" hailed the liberal

Newsweek (8 September). "Poland: Workers score historic _Victory" echoed the Workers Communist Party's Forge (5 September). The coincidence was not accidental. Over the Polish workers strikes there was a remarkable consensus. The Pope prayed for them.' Leaders of the imperialist coun­tries--all labor-hating~ anti-communist bourgeois politicians--supported them. Through the pro-

capitalist labor bureaucracy, from McDermott to the Cold Warriors of the American AFL-CIO to the entire fake left, excepting only the Kremlin-loyal Stalinists. the Polish strikes received uncritical and enthusiastic acclamation. New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent, who was in Poland during the height of the strikes, wrote: " ••• at all times during my visit I expressed my view that ' free trade unions are an essential element of a free society and are particularly relevant to any nation that wants to call itself socialist" (Solidari­!l. September).

Only the international Spartacist tendency noted that the crisis in Poland was heading toward an explosion which could bring "either proletarian revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy ~ . capitalist counterrevolution ~ Pope Wojtyla's church. " While the fake left hailed the strike set -tlement as a victory for the working class, we said:

"Insofar as the settlement enhances the Polish workers' power to struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy, revolutionaries can support the strike and its outcome. But only a blind man could fail to see the gross influence of the Cath­olic church and also pro-Western sentiments among the striking workers. If the settlement strengthens the working class organizationally, it also strengthens the forces of reaction. Po­land stands today on a razor's edge."

--Spartacist Canada, Sept.IOct. 1980

As we pointed out, no Stalinist bureaucratic caste, which must monopolize political power to preserve itself, can tolerate any genuinely independent working-class organization. And the strike leader­ship around Lech Walesa, which strongly identifies with the powerful Catholic church opposition, would increasingly challenge the damaged and discredited regime. Indeed the Gdansk settlement settled nothing and in less than two months' t\me every-one senses Polish society has lost its moorings and is headed god knows where.

The Polish Stalinist bureaucracy cannot live with this settlement. The economic concession to the workers can only tighten the noose of economic

November/December 1980

strangulation and indebtedness to the Western bankers. As newly-elected U. S. president Ronald Reagan beats the drum for an apti-Soviet war drive. the Catholic church in Poland has further consoli­dated and legitimized its place as the institutional­ized opposition in Poland. The implementation of the strikers' demand for church access to the media through recent broadcasting of Sunday mass on state-controlled TV is a victory for the nec­essarily restorationist Polish Pope. John Paul Wojtyla, and his Vatican mafia.

For Trotskyists. whose struggle to ousethe Stalinist bureaucracies is based on unconditional defense of the deformed and degenerated workers states against imperialism. there can only be a war to the death between the two programs of workers political revolution and social counter­revolution in the Soviet bloc. "Free trade unions"? Catholic. socialist. to fight for what? "Democracy"? YeS. but for what class? These questions must be answered by revolu­tionaries who seek to head the upsurge in Poland in the direc­tion of proletarian political revolution and combat reac­tionaries who would exploit the justified grievances of the Po­lish masses tq create a mass base for counterrevolution.

--

9

before the cardinal and the pope--which is precise­ly what Walesa has been doing.

The first time Walesa left Gdansk after the settlement it was to go to Warsaw for a private audience with Cardinal Wyszynski. And it is main­ly from the ZNAK group. the semi-official political arm of the church. that Walesa'S union federation Solidarity draws its outside advisers. Meanwhile Poland's most prominent "Western .... style" social democrat Jacek Kuron. was conspicuously rejected as one of Solidarity's official advisers. During the strikes Kuron had served as an intermediary be­tween dissident Catholic workers. like Walesa and Anna Walentynowicz. and the church leader­ship. especially the ZNAK group. But who needs

POLOIIB: IICTOIBB OUIBIIIB!

RWL: Church? What Church?

These considerations were totally alien to the fake-Trotsky­ists internationally including both the U. S. Socialist Workers Pq.rty and European Mandelite wings of the United Secretariat (USee) and their various satel­lites like the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) who ig­nore. downplay or just ration­alize the, ominous presence of Wojtyla's Catholic church. "Who could believe that these workers

THE FORGE ;::,~ -- ---- - -- - <

- - ~- ~-

went on strike on behalf of the The left on Poland. Pope and the Catholic church? That they are abandoning the fight for socialism?" queries the 1 September Socialist Voice.

Who indeed. Church influence is so visible that even strike leader Lech Walesa felt the need to deny he was organizing a union for Catholics only: "I don't want to create church trade unions" (Wall Street Journal. 22 September). Walesa's dis--­claimer indicates that there are many Polish work­ers who want a union independent of the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy but not one that kneels down

Kuron now when Walesa and Wyszynski can and do confer directly?

So long as clerical-nationalists likE!' Walesa lead the new union. they stand in imminent danger of subordination to the counterrevolutionary aims of the Catholic hierarchy and behiJ.:ld it Western im­perialism. But the R WL flatly denies any danger of counterrevolution and heralds the Polish workers strikes as "the road to political revolution. "

(Continued on next page)

10

Poland ..• (continued fr,om page 9)

Such willful dec~it comes from years of ignoring if not outright abandoning the Trotskyist position of revolutionary defense of the gains of October--from ch~erleading every stripe of pro-imperialist dissi­dent to decla.ring the defense of the Soviet Union. "was not the issue" in Afghanistan (if not actively joining the imperialist chorus against "Soviet ag­gression"). The recent Quebec split off from the RWL toes the same line on Poland (as it does on most every political question). The article on Poland in the Socialist Challenge Organization's Combat Socialiste could well have been authored by the editors of Socialist Voice.

The first reaction of the fidelista social democrats of the RWL was to trumpet "It can't happen in Cuba. " Because, you see, "in Cuba there is no privileged bureaucratic caste. " But then where are the demo­cratically elected workers councils? The real dif­ferrnce between Fidel and Gierek is that Castro has no~ yet frittered away the tremendous personal au­thority he gained as the leader of a popular uprising which overthrew Batista. T~e Polish leaders first under Gomulka and then under Gierek have succeeded in both losing the trust of the workers and in pro­moting the growth of Catholic reaction.

The RWL following in the footsteps of its Ameri­can big sister, the Socialist Workers Party, likes to cite the authority of Castro's Cuba (which need­less to say hasn't heralded the Polish workers strikes). But these days the RWL and SWP seem to be finding themselves standing somewhere to the right of their Cuban llder maximo--on the Iran/Iraq war and again on the Catholic church. In Poland the SWP doesn't fight the influence of the Catholic church; it hails it (the Militant's Fred Feldman even went so far as to call for Ira daily Wyszynski Hour on television"). Unlike the SWP, however, ·Castro did and does not tolerate open counterrevolutionary agitation by the church:

"At the May Day [1961J mass meeting in Civic Plaza the axe fel1. Fidel announced that all pri­vate schools would be nationalized and hence­forth religious instruction must be confined to the churches. He also advised the Spanish priests who opposed the Revolution to 'pack their bags. ' Subsequent announcements indicate that the Government has withdrawn their permis­sio~ to be i9' Cuba, thus effectuating their ex­pulsion. They leave under an accumulation of popular contempt. In the May Day parade two actors dressed as priests passed through the streets bestowing benedictions on a figure dressed in the caterpil1ar camouflage of the invaders .• Around them were the 'politiqueros, ' bigshot politicians with their diamond-studded girlfriends; the' senoritas,' the teen-age set from the private schools dancing American jitterbug; and a figure of Uncle Sam decorated with the dollar sign. In this hour of victory, the

Spartaclst Canada

joyful Cuban people were mo·cking the 'groupso they looked upon as defeated oppressors. In­cluded were the black-frocked priests.. "

--Monthly Review, July-August 1961

What happened in Poland is not likely to happen in Cuba where the Catholic church was put down and its social base undercut through collectivization of agriculture. (Moreover, whd ever heard of Castro being offered a loan by an American bank?) For our part, we can only solidarize with one of the chants from the earlier days of the Cuban revolu­tion: "Come on Fide~. To the Priests give' em hell!"

In Struggle!: "Human Rights" Hoxhaltes

The eclectic New Left Stalinists of In Struggle! (IS!) have been thrown into turmoil by the re­emergence of the Russian question. Even before the upsurge in Poland, IS! began debating the date of the invisible counterrevolution which is supposed to have overturned socialist property relations in Stalinist Russia. In discussing the program of the Polish dissidents, Proletarian Unity notes with discomfort that, "This question becomes all the more complex when you see that all the leaders of / social democracy [to say nothing of the imperialist chieftains] throughout the world, our very own Ed Broadbent included, have been gushing praise for the Polish workers' movement" (Oct., Nov., Dec.). Their confusion was increased when ~ 1. Populit, organ of the Albanian regime which IS! regards as the last bastion of anti-revisionism, viciously denounced the strikes. Although Hoxha rails end­lessly at Soviet and Chinese. "revisionism, " inde­pendent trade unions are just as much a threat to his own brutal Stalinist regime in backward Albania. Thus ZIP is more strident than Pravda (of course :rvtoscQ;-has the muscle to implement its veiled

o

threats):

II All the concessions speak of the rotten situa­tion of the present Polish revisionist regime and the more. radical-transformation of Poland into a capitalist country •••• II The creation of 'independent self-governing trade unions' in Poland will serve as a spring­board to pass from the present system of re­visionist bureaucratic centralism into a com­plete capitalist anarcho-trade uni'Onist system. "

--quoted in In Struggle!, 14 October

Echoing the rhetoric of the Great Helmsman, IS! denounces the Soviet Union as "SOCial-imperialist" and labels all its satellites state capitalist. A mish­mash of anti-communism and workerism, it appeals to gut-level economism: the capitalists in the West cut wages; so do the Polish bureaucrats; therefore, they too must be capitalists. What they can't ex­plain is just what sort of capitalist class it is that pays the peasants high prices for their produce then sells it cheap to the workers, "accumulating" in the process not capital but ••• a $20 billion for­eign debt. In fact IS! expresses sympathy for the

\

November/December 1980

supposed plight of the backward, unproductive small holding peasantry! "As for the Polish peasants, their situation is rapidly becoming intolerable" (Proletarian Unity, Oct., Nov;, Dec.). No wonder then that IS! is also sympathetic to the traditional spokesmen for the reactionary pro-capitalist pre­judices of the peasantry--the Catholic hierarchy. Proletarian Unity writes:

"The Church is often associated with these pro­test movements, which also demand freedom of religion. The Church has also often defended human rights in Poland. But lately, it has been mainly c::~aracterized by its increasingly close relations with State power. "

In the first place, individual freedom of worship has never been restricted in Poland, at least for Catholics. And how does the church hierarchy use its freedom? The very day after the Gdansk Lenin Shipyard seizure Cardinal Wyszynski led a mass (actually a political demonstration) of 150,000 commemorating the defeat of the Bolshevik Red Army in 1920 at the hands of the right-wing Polish nationalist (and later fascistic dictator) Pilsudski. The Cardinal's appeals for an end to the strike were merely tactical attempts to avoid a premature confrontation. The real program of the Catholic church is expressed in Pope Wojtyla's wholehearted participation, apparently with IS! approkral, in Jimmy Carter's anti-Soviet, capitalist-restorationist "human rights" campaign. Perhaps IS! will soon be reminding us of Father Lionel Groulx's clerical­nationalist Action Francaise and ita exemplary defense of Quebec's national rights in the twenties.

William Kashtan on the Trouble with Glerek

In a speech October 10, William Kashtan, Gen­eral Secretary of the Communist Party of Canada candidly acknowledged that Gierek and Co. had

made "serious mistakes. " In this category was included the failure to collectivize agriculture

11

and carry out a struggle against religious ideology leaving "the field open to anti-socialist views. " Another "serious mistake" was going into debt to Western bankers (when Kashtan attempted to ex­plain how the $ 20 billion debt would be repaid he was me"tby a cry from the audience "Don't pay it back! ").

Kashtan also explained that the ~talinist ,unions in Poland failed to "pay enough atfention" to the demands of the workers. Although we expect that Kashtan will soon be whistling a different tune--in line with the incessant denunciations of "anti­socialist" forces in Poland coming from the Krem­lin--his initial critique of the Polish Stalinist bureaucracy doesn't wash. A hardened Stalinist hack. Kashtan could not of course deal with the real problem--Stalinism and the theory of socialism in one country. The threat of capitalist restoration is .the legacy of Stalinism. It is they who capitulated to and then wooed the church, who conciliated the peasantry at the cost of the workers. who incited anti-Semitism and Polish nationalism, who have allowed Western bankers to grab Poland's econo­my by the short hairs. Their total incapacity to de­fend the revolutionary gains--that is their real crime.

A caste based on the monopolization of govern­mental power. the bureaucracy--not only in Poland but all the deformed and degenerated workers states--is bPposed for its very survival to workers democracy and thus incapable of "paying enough attention" to the demands of the workers. Only a Trotskyist party can undertake the real defense of the gains of the workers against the dangers of counterrevolution. While everyone from ultra-

, reactionaries to pseudo-Trotskyists hailed the strikers. we insist there are possibiUties both of proletarian political revolution and capitalist resto­ration--it is'the job of Trotskyists to see that it turns out to be the former arid not the latter ••

Was the Church a Factor? The Polish dissidents in the KOR-KSS led by

Jacek Kuron received favorable reviews in many of ~he publications of the United Secretariat. However this would seem to pose a bit of a prob­lem for those who want to turn a blind eye to the influence of Pope Wojtyla's church. Recently Abraham Brumberg interviewed Jan Litynski. a founding member of the KOR-KSS:

Question: How fully did the Church support the workers? There have been conflicting reports here about the broadcast of Cardinal Wyszynski.

Answer: Precisely what the Primate did or did not say is really not at issue. In general it seems to me that the Catholic Church over the past thirty years has displayed so much wisdom, common sense, and realism. that we are fully

entitled to trust it. I'm absolutely convinced _ that the Church will never do anything that might prove harmful to the interests of the nation. Its actions over the years certainly bear this out.

Question: For Americans the sight of workers singing first the Internationale and then religiOUS songs. and attending mass in the shipyards. was altogether new.

Answer: In Poland not only believers but most people are profoundly tied to the Church. The singing of religious songs is an- expression of faith as much in God as it is of faith in the Catholic Church as a true defender of the rights of the Polish people.

~

--New York Review of~. 9 October

12

Eight thousand trade unionists marched on Queen's Park October 18 to protest the wave of. plant closings and layoffs which has wiped out 65,000 jobs in Ontario in the past year. The rally was organized by the Ohtario Fed­eration of Labour to kick off a petition cam­paign begging the Tory government for better severance terms for laid off workers and to push for poisonous protectionism as the solu­tion to unemployment of "Canadian workers. " The bureaucrats attempted to prevent the angry

War Measures ..• (continued from page 3)

The Italian CP has been outspoken in clamoring for the enforcement of "law and order" against the Red Brigades--demanding expansion of the state secret police and more suppression of "political criminality. "

As Leninists we reject the impotent petty­bourg~ois stra~gy of terrorism, which is born out of pessimism over the ability of the working

WfJRNERSIIAN'IJIlI1J Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

24 issues-$3j Introductory offer (6 issuesl-$1

-Includes Spart.clst

Order from/lMlY to: SPARTAC'ST PUBLlSH'NG co. 80. 1377 G.P.O., Now YorII, N.Y. 10116

Spartaclst Canada

ranks from hearing a class-struggle program against the layoffs. Marshals excluded a mili­tant TL contingent, which included members of the Rouge Militant Caucus from Detroit's UAW Local 600, with a banner demanding "Fight Layoffs Through Sitdowns !" from the march on Queen's Park. Despite the exclusion the TL participated in the rally, selling ~ papers and putting forward the strategy of North Amer­ican industrywide strikes and sitdowns against layoffs.

masses. to overthrow their oppressors. Inevitably terrorist acts provide a pretext for massive state terror, as did the 1970 kidnappings. We condemn acts of random terror, such as. the mailbox bomb­ings of the sixties, which endanger the lives of innocent people. But although the Felquistes were misguided, their targets in October 1970 were symbols of imperialist oppression and capitalist rule. We demand that those imprisoned for the Cross/Laporte kidnappings be freed!

The War Measures Act was intended as a warn­ing to the Quebecois that the slightest threat of separation would be met with all the military mus­cle the Canadian state could muster. It is the ele­mentary duty of the Canadian labor movement and socialists to unconditionally defend Quebec's right to independence. dnly through the active defense of the democratic national and language rights of the Quebecois can the basis be laid for truly uniting French- and English-speaking workers in the strug­gle for North American soci~l1ist revolution ••

November/December 1980

Klan ... (continued from page 5)

slogan 'Smash the Klan' were hurriedly pre­pared. What fitting humiliation. But make no mistake. This is a 'Ban1the Klan' march headed straight for the office of Attorney-General Roy McMurtry."

As if to confirm this point. the CP-led goon squad, with the participation of the International Socialists and hand in hand with the cops. excluded a contin­gent led by the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist­Leninist) (CPC-ML) carrying placards calling for "self-defense" (also included was a typical gem of CPC-ML Canadian nationalist idiocy. "Ku Klux Klan and V. S. Imperialism Out of Canada!" As if fascist terror in the V. S. is OK--what next. we wondered. "V. S. Out of North America"?)

The nutty CPC-ML. like the other Maoist. ex­Maoist and Maoid groupings. is incapab~e of waging an effective fight against the .fa{;;cists because they share their characteristic and virulent anti-commu­nist hatred for Russia. Not a word can be found on Toronto's East European fascistic groups in the many pages of anti-fascist propaganda published by the Maoists. despite the evident lash-up of these veteran anti-communists with the Klan and Nazis. So when CASAC's Nikola Sahounov appeals to "all people who call themselves anti-communist or anti­Soviet to join me" in Afghanistan. we can't resist the suggestion that the WCP and CPC-ML take up the invitation; certainly the Red Army will know how to deal with them.

As for the CPo their call for "Ban the Klan" was as predictable as their "peace offensive II when the Red Armyjmarched into Afghanistan to combat Is­lamic xea6tion. But reliance on the bosses' state can have no more success in defending the workers movement and its allies than "detente" has had in defending the Soviet Vnion from imperialist mili­tarism. Bitter exper\ence has shown that the capi­talist courts and cops· can only be relied on to stand with the fascists against minorities and th,e working class. They well know that in a period of crisis and working-class upsurge the fascists stand ready to aid in breaking the back of the labor movement and suppressing restive minorities fed up with capital­ist oppression.

In Greensboro survivors of the massacre are being prosecuted for "felony rioting" while the case against the Klan/Nazi murderers is sabotaged by the public prosecutor. The Chattanooga gunmen have been set free. Tw:o of the victims of the San Diego beatings were arrested by one of the assail­ants who turned out to be a cop. None of the Klan bombers have been put behind bars. In Scotland, Connecticut on September 13,. h~dreds of state troopers armed with automatics and attack dogs patrolled the perimeter of the cross burnings to protect the fascists from outraged anti-Klan demon­strators. When 2.500 protesters. including a 70-

13

strong Spartacist League /V. S. contingent. ran off the Nazis in Evanston. Illinois on October 19, they did so by breaking through the police barricades.

Closer to home. the Ontario Fire Marshal's of­fice (a division of McMurtrY's department) has concluded that the cause of the fire at the CP head­quarters is "undetermined. II absolving the police of responsibility for finding the arsonists. The trial of the cops who last year killed Albert Johnson ended with their acquittal. provokjng a justifiable cry of outrage. in particular from Toronto's black community. Is it possible to believe that racist killers will enforce a ban against the Klan?

At least some of the left groups aren't sure. Perhaps thinking that the cops. who are hell-bent on maintaining their monopoly of armed violence, will cooperate with their everyday victims. the WCP also calls for "self-defense. " And only In Struggle! could have come up with this headline: "You Have to Organize to Smash the Klan in Order

·to Ban the Klan" (In Struggle!, 4 November). In Struggle!. which has made a political program out of ever petitioning. ever campaigning for the capi­talist government to recognize Quebec's right to self-determination. to end wage controls. to give workers a voice in the constitution talks--now pro­poses independent working-class action. once again. to pressure the bosses' goveJ;'nment to "Ban the Klan. r r .

Both the WCP and In Struggle! are active in the Riverdale Action Committee Against Racism (RACAR). formed in part as a competitor to the CP-dominated Committee for Racial Equality. Organized around the slogan "Smash the Klan" and including churches. community centers. housing co-ops and the like. RACAR pollyannishly believes that by "working together with a variety of ethnic people- -with equal rights and opportunities for all ••• we can begin to solve our huge economic. social and political problems. "

Alternatin'g between such soppy classless com­munity-oriented propagandizing and abject reliance on the cops and courts is no substitute for the labor­centered action necessary to smash the Klan. When the KKK tii:re~tEmed a "victory march" in Detroit only days after the Greensboro massacre. 500' trade unionists. ghetto youth. students and)socialists rallied in Kennedy Square to ensure that the KKK wouldn't ride in the Motor City. Last April in San Francisco 1.200 trade unionists. blacks. Jews. Chi­canos. gays and socialists prevented the Nazi's from celebrating Hitler's birthday by rallying in the very spot that the Hitlerites had planned to occupy. Both actions, in which the Spartacist League/V. S. played a leading role. were small but successful examples of what is needed. The giant organized labor move­ment could crush the fascists ~s easily as stepping on an egg shell. But such a mobilization requires a struggle within the unions against the labor tops. based on a program for a revolutionary workers party that will get l!'id of the decaying capitalist sys­tem that spawns the KKK /Nazi filth ••

14

PSAC ••• (continued from page 16)

Spartacllt Canada

refuse to sign a contract until all discipiines and suspensions were dropped was passed unanimously. Drop all the disciplines and suspensions! No

Even Dennis McDermott, the man who all but cheered as the Trudeau government trampled the 1978 CUPW strike, threatened to call for sympathy strikes to back up the federal clerks. But for all the tough guy talk the government had correctly gauged ,the cowardice of the trade-union tops and refused to give an inch.

reprisals! , The PSAC sellout bodes ill for the upcoming

postal contract negotiations. The go¥ernment has announced that it intends to get rid of the post office's million-dollar deficit--and it won't be through a 35 cent stamp but the jobs, living and working conditions of postal workers. There are already plans to eliminate a minimum of 50 jobs

McDermott demanded that the Treasury Board "belly up to the bargaining table. " But it was McDermott and Stewart who did all the belly crawl­ing. They came out of the backroom negotiations with the government with a contract almost identi­cal to the government's original offer--a few pen­nies more and some cosmetic

in postal transportation in Toronto alone and the LCUC bureaucrats' only response has been to plan the most "painless" implementation of the govern­ment's layoff scheme.

A united struggle by all postal workers is the key to turning the tide on the government's union-busting

benefits were added to "sweeten" this stinking deal. But the de­mands which originally br0ught the, federal clerks out on the street--a cost-of-living allow­ance and a shorter work week - -were completely dropped. More ominous. the PSAC lead­ership abandoned its demand for no reprisals. giving the government free rein to disci­pline PSAC members who re­spected the picket lines. These "responsible" labor statesmen even agreed to sit on the com­mittee that has been set up to dole out the bosses' discipline!

In addition to the PSAC mem­bers who face the threat of discipline 1,500 CUPW members have already been handed down letters of discipline for refusing to cross the PSAC picket lines during the federal clerks' walk­out in September. Arnold Gould. president of the Toronto CUPW local. along with the local's vice president have been served notices of suspension for asking union members to respect the picket lines. Four members of the LCDC Local 1. including a vice preside9-t and the driver chief steward, were suspended for "picket line activity" and the majority of Toronto drivers received a letter of reprimand. Faced with this wholesale attack on the membership, a motion put forward by a militant driver steward at the October general membership meeting demanding that the local in con­junction with the national office

B.C. FEDERATION OF LABOU.R (CLC) 3110 Boundary Road, Bumaby. B,C V5M 4A2 16(4) 430·14~1

Septembe~ 29, 1980

TO ALL AFFILIATES:

THE FoLLOWING TELEGRAM WAS SENT BY JIM KINNA~RD PRESIDENT, B. C. FEDERATION or LABOUR yo ANDY STeWART, PRESIDENT, P.S.A.C., OTTAWA AND' TO JEAN-CLAUDE PARROT PRESIDENT, C.U.P.W., OTTAWA WITH COPIES TO ALL CLC OFFICERS AND ALL CLC EXECUTIVE COUNCIL MEMBERS:

D,ear Sir & Brother:

Further to my telegram of Friday, September 26, 1980, I wish to reiterate the policy of the B. C. Federation of Labour (CLC) regarding the sanctity of picket lines in t~is province.

Our Federation has developed this policy to insure that the· strikes of our affiliates are successful and that a picket line, the last defense of workers, maintains credibility. The development, use and enforcement of this policy has made the labour movement in this province as strong as' it is. Franklyl we do not want to see our militancy reduced to the pathetic levels which exist in other provinces. Your in~tructions to your members to cross picket lines in this province is severely damaging the solidarity and respect for picket lines which has taken us years to build.

If you have been forced into a position of striking the federal government, then we strongly suggest that you get on with it and do a proper job instead of allowing the employer to operate at levels which may only cause slight inconvenience.

I demand that you rescind your instructions to your members to cross picket lines and inform them that the picketing policy of this Federation be adhered to throughout British Columbia. If you want to conduct a "sort of strike" in other provinces, please feel free to do so, but in British Columbia you'should use the militant tradition that has won our affiliates the best wages, ,~orking conditions and benefits in the country.

I await your reply to our demand that your union conduct itself in the proper manner regarding your strike, and cease immediately your course of undermining the B. C. labour movement.

oteu 15 "WOrking for working people in british columbia-

-e-'

November/December 1980

offensive. But the LCUC and CUPW leaderships have no more appetite for a fight with the govern­ment than Stewart and Co. Recently LCUC national vice-president William Findlay proposed that the present contract be extended until the post office is converted into a Crown Corporation. In the mean­time the CUPW is still drawing up its contract de­mands. in keeping with Parrot and Co. I s past re­cord of keeping the inside, postal workers chained to the job without a contract for_!ll0nths on end.

The massive strikebreaking assault on the 1978 CUPW strike was the spearhead in the government's :lrive to take away the right to strike for all govern­ment workers. The musings over restricting the right to strike for government workers coming from Jacob Finkelman--the mediator in the PSAC strike and the author of the anti-labor Public Ser­vice Staff Relations Act--were greeted favorably by the bourgeois media. What was of particular concern to this labor-hater was building a more effective legal arsenal to smash any signs of soli­darity between government workers--especially respect for picket lines. The government has wasted no time in acting on these proposals. hoping to smash any signs of solidarity for once and for all through its disciplines. suspensions and firings.

The scabbing deals made by the pos~al union tops in the PSAC strike could well have been au­thored by Finkelman. Such treachery is of a piece with the bureaucrats I criminal policies that have kept postal workers divided along craft lines. Craft -unionism has spelled only defeats--the erosion of hard-won union gains and an open door to govern­ment disciplines. suspensions. firings and even the jailing of the CUPW national president Parrot. But within the ranks of the postal unions there is widespread sentiment for united action and one union of all postal workers.

Since its inception SC has underlined the impor­tance of one industrial union of all postal workers. As we pointed out in our first issue. " ••• the fight for a democratically-merged industrial union of all postal workers is an essential part of the struggle to defend the real interests of postal workers" (Spartacist Canada. October 1975). The CUPWand LCUC contracts have a common expiry date. Joint negotiating and strike committees must be set up immediately to wage a common contract fight that can lay the basis for one union. With the backing

MARXIST LITERATURE

Trotskyist Leagul PubliC Ofllce Hours Saturdays, 1:00 - 5:00 pm

Ste. 502, 299 Queen Street West, Toronto Ph. (416) 593-4138

15

of the rest of the labor movement such a united battle could win real gains for postal workers and strike a blow for all of labor against the strike­breaking capitalist government.

In the wake of the federal clerks' strike the bourgeois press has been filled with predictions of impending "revolution" in the ranks of the union to get rid of the PSAC misleaders who sold out the strike. Postal workers--and all of labor--need a new leadership--not one that crin~s before the government but one that can lead areal class-struggle fight agaiI1st the government. its courts and cops ..

~100Votes ••• (continued from page 7)

and working class neighborhoods. Coleman stood clearly for the unconditional defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist attack. organizing the unorganized. sit-down strikes against mass layoffs. free abortion on demand. elimination of anti-homo­sexual laws and massive labor/minority mobiliza­tions. like the April 19 ANCAN rally. to stop the Nazis/ KKK.

Sounding much like the craven NDP-loya1ists of the RWL and the Socialist Workers Group. the min­iscule Socialist League /Democratic- Centralist at­tacked Campbell at the forum for characterizing the NDP as a "roadblock. " Taking their cue from big daddy Alan Thornett. British Workers Socialist League leader. who hopes in vain to "Make the Lefts Fight" in the British Labour Party. the SL/DC called for support to. and working in the NDP at all times. Noting that he had spent 8 years fighting in the NDP. Campbell responded:

"When somebody mentions the labor party I don't genuflect. I ask 'What's the program of the party. what is the class axis of the party. what are they fighting for?' That's the question. The question isn't a labor-reform p.arty. the question is a mass-based revolutionary workers party based on the Transitional Program as be­ing !;he only vehicle that can lead the working class to power ••.. "I am extremely happy to be up here on the po­dium with Diana tonight because it is the pro­gram of a revolutionary party tha,t is being put forward in this campaign. And you get wh.at you build. In Canada they built a reformist party that doesn't take us anywhere and has to be

destroyed. ".

Trotskyist League Directory Toronto............ .........• (416) 593-4138

Box 7198 Station A, Toronto, Ont. Vancouver •.................. (604) 254-8875

Box 26 Station A, Vancouver, B.C. Winnipeg ....•.. :............. (204) 589-7214

Box 3952 Station B, Winnipeg, Man.

"

PSAC Bureaucrats Sell Out

Fora United Fight by all Postal Workers!

Chanting "Traitor! Chicken!" 1,500 federal clerks, members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), marched on the national headquarters of their own union in Ottawa, Oc­tober 9. The clerks were out­raged at the sellout deal brought back from the bargaining table by PSAC national president Andy Stewart and Canadian La­bour Congress head Dennis McDermott. In the face of this outpouring of rage by the ranks of the union Stewart and the rest. of the traitorous PSAC national leadership fled the un­ion office which was left under the guard of an RCMP riot squad.

.'

.'.- .....

V QU~lIlt'T> "C.O'f$ .. -~.·.:.· ..•..

.. , .. ~ .... : ... ,--:, ... :.".

, f'

With negotiations heating up with the Letter Carriers Union of Canada (LCUC) and the Ca­nadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), whose present con­tracts expire December 31, the government wanted to flex its muscle with PSAC to drive

Vancouver PSAC picket. Don Scott Photo

home the message to the militant postal workers unions that they had bette r accept what's offered or face a massive strikebreaking attack. In the end, however, it wasn't the government, its courts and cops that got the federal clerks back on the job.

Socialists often call the trade-union bureaucrats the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. Living up to this name Stewart, backed by McDermott and the leaders of the postal unions, did the job for the bosses. CUPW national president Jean-Claude Parrot and LCUC chief Robert McGarry were lined up to order their members to scab on the strike, completely undercutting the solidarity demonstrated by postal workers who had refused to cross PSAC

. picket lines in an earlier walkout by the federal clerks in September.

The postal union bureaucrats' scabbing d~al did not sit very well with the ranks of the LCUC and

CUPW. In Quebec City postal truck drivers refused to follow instructions and respected the federal clerks'picket lines. In B. C. postal service was shut down completely. Even the right-wing leader­ship of the B. C. Federation of Labour felt com­pelled to write a letter to Stewart defending the "sanctity of picket lines" (see page 14). In Toronto militants in LCUC Local 1 fought for. a motion at an informal stewards' gathering demanding that the national office repudiate the scabbing deal and stand on the righ,t side of the PSAC picket lines.

The PSAC leadership's "responsible" strike got them nowhere with the Treasury' Board. In a mo­ment of "militant" bravado Stewart called on all PSAC members to respect the picket lines with the pledge that no contract would be signed without a firm guarantee of no 'reprisals from the government.

(Continued on page 14)

'. , .

~i